CULTURALLY and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) residents in the City of Maribyrnong do not understand the council’s role in the community and are not receiving council information because of language barriers, research has found.
The investigation also found that some CALD community members were not literate in their own language, which made the provision of translated material redundant.
The findings were presented at Maribyrnong City Council’s Community Access and Strategic Policy meeting last week as part of the council’s draft CALD Communications Strategy.
The draft highlighted eight key problem areas with the distribution of information in a bid to expand on existing CALD services.
The strategy, adopted last Tuesday, has three main components: the welcome model, the peer facilitation model and staff guidelines.
The welcome model involves the use of booklets – also available in CD, audio and web formats – to enumerate general information on the council’s services.
The peer facilitation model trains someone in each CALD community group to disseminate information. A Maribyrnong City Council officer will be present at these sessions.
The strategy was developed in consultation with the New Hope Foundation, Adult Multicultural Education Services (AMES), Western Region Ethnic Communities Council and the Migrant Resource Centre.
The groups gave feedback on their perception of the council and the effectiveness of the council’s communications.
Mayor Michelle MacDonald said the strategy proved the council’s commitment to represent and serve all residents equally.
“The feedback was that our diverse community would greatly benefit from more face-to-face contact through the council having a presence out in the community,” she said.
According to 2006 Census figures, 38.9 per cent of residents in the municipality were born overseas.
Vietnam, China, India, Britain and Italy were the top five countries of origin.
